Unbound (23 page)

She smirked, but let it pass. “We’ll keep trying. Bi Wei, Ponce de Leon, Nicola . . . someone should be able to help you. And if they can’t, I want you to remember something.”

“What’s that?”

She kissed me hard enough to make my skin tingle from my neck to the base of my spine. “I didn’t fall in love with you for your magic.”

“Thank you.” I nodded and turned back to her book.

“How do you know that pen will write something she’ll be able to see?”

“I don’t,” I said. “But Gutenberg used this pen to lock books. That means whatever he did had to carry through to all copies of those books.” I turned the page, uncapped Gutenberg’s pen, and began to write.

Every surviving student of Bi Sheng had a book like this, and every one of those books included the same block-printed pages in the front. It was those pages I defaced, though the ink left no visible mark. I had to trust Bi Wei would see my message. I angled the desk lamp to help me see the faint indentations in the paper where I had penned her name.

I hesitated. I needed to be circumspect, since I had no idea who else might read this. That meant no mention of Gutenberg’s death or what specifically I was asking for.

“Writer’s block?” asked Lena.

“Something like that.” How could I reassure her this wasn’t a Porter trick? Bi Wei knew what the Porters had done to me. I believed she trusted me, to an extent. But I couldn’t even prove I was the one writing the message. Anyone could have taken Lena’s book and used it to lure Bi Wei into a trap.

Nicola’s voice cut through my thoughts as she argued with the other Regional Masters. She was louder than usual, as if anger or frustration or simple grief had adjusted her volume. “Gutenberg said a show of force should be the
last
resort. We need to build goodwill. We can’t do that with automatons.”

I looked at Lena, who shrugged.

“Suppose your plan worked,” Nicola said a moment later. “Say we wiped out a terrorist organization or overthrew a dictator. Imagine we somehow managed to do so without a single civilian casualty. Any such action will still create enemies. Even those who approve of the results will fear our power and the potential threat we pose. We need to tread carefully. In time, we can—” She paused. “Then what about Weronika? She’s been visiting hospitals and healing terminal patients. If more Porters could—no, I understand. Miss Palmer has made that quite clear.”

“Who’s in charge with Gutenberg gone?” Lena asked softly.

“I’m not sure.” I had never paid enough attention to politics within the Porters. I had no interest in working my way up the ranks, or being anything except a researcher. Magical bureaucracy was still bureaucracy, and I wanted nothing to do with any of it. I had unconsciously started thinking of Nicola
in Gutenberg’s place as head of the Porters, but she was one of many Regional Masters. Not necessarily the most senior or the most powerful, either.

Although the whole question could be moot soon. Between the world discovering magic and Meridiana doing her best to destroy . . . well, pretty much everything, there was a real possibility that the Porters wouldn’t survive. Gutenberg had been the pin holding the organization together, and even he had struggled to keep things from fragmenting.

“What would you do?” Lena asked.

“What do you mean?”

“If you were in charge. Say Nicola and the rest decide to promote Isaac Vainio to be Gutenberg’s replacement. What’s the first thing you’d do?”

“Order Nicola and everyone else involved to check in with their therapists, because that would mean they’d lost their damn minds. Then I’d probably resign with extreme prejudice.”

She folded her arms.

“Okay, fine. I’d start by offering an olive branch to the students of Bi Sheng.” I looked down at Lena’s book. “To be honest, I don’t know how the Porters fit in a world where magic is out in the open. Are we scholars? A global police force? Saviors or conquerors or both?”

Lena smiled. “I’m surprised you wouldn’t immediately set out to colonize Mars.”

“I’d save that for the second month, along with getting Fox to put
Firefly
back into production.” I glanced over at Nicola, who was still listening to whoever was on the other end of the line. “How do you map the future of the world?”

“You don’t,” Lena said softly. “Not alone.”

Nicola drummed her hand against the wall of the closet. She spoke more slowly, deliberately choosing each word. “I agree, which is why our first priority is to retrieve the armillary sphere. As the senior Porter on site, I intend to—” She straightened. “I don’t believe you have the authority to do that.”

Lena and I had given up any pretense of not listening in.

“Naturally. I trust you’ll inform me once the vote is complete.” Nicola hung up a moment later, but remained seated. When she saw us watching, she said, “They believe I’m responsible for Gutenberg’s death.”

“The hell you are,” I said.

“Who believes that?” asked Lena.

“Cameron Howes, and at least two other Regional Masters.” She stared straight ahead. “If enough others agree, they can appoint another person to oversee this region.”

“Cameron Howes is a pretentious, narcissistic, ignorant pustule of a man.” I was surprised by my own vehemence.

“I know,” Nicola said, so matter-of-factly that I had to grin. “He sees Gutenberg’s death as an opportunity, and he’s not alone. He wants me replaced by someone he can control.”

I stood up and started toward her, intending to offer comfort, but she flinched when I got close. I stopped moving.

“You need to reach Bi Wei and finish your poem,” she said. “I . . . need you to leave me alone. Please.” She sounded brittle, as if that flat monotone contained within it a scream of rage and grief. Nicola was at her breaking point. She had lost not only Gutenberg, but four of her animals, creatures she cared about as if they were family.

“Of course,” I said softly. “Sorry.”

She nodded and left the room.

Lena took my hand. “It’s not you.”

“I know.” I stared at the closed door, listening to the fading sound of Nicola’s humming. Eventually, I returned to the desk and Lena’s book. “If Howes and the others find out we’re reaching out to Bi Wei, it will give them one more reason to get rid of Nicola.”

“People like Howes don’t need reasons,” said Lena. “All they want are excuses and justifications. If you hold back to try to protect Nicola, he’ll just find them elsewhere.”

I squinted at the page, trying to reread the few lines I had written. There was no need to share our location. Bi Wei should
be able to find us through her connection to Lena’s book. But how to prove it was us . . .

I thought about the first time I had read Bi Wei’s own book, before her return to this world. Bi Wei had written of her first experience with magic, a story whose power and joy resonated with my own discovery. She had hiked into the hills with her great grandaunt, where they read an old star chart and used its magic to study the sky, to see beyond what was visible to the naked eye.

I remembered her joy, preserved all those years by the magic of her readers. I picked up Gutenberg’s pen, jotted down three more sentences, and began to sketch the constellations.

I traced the final letters of Gerbert d’Aurillac’s poem at about one in the morning, then sat back to try to stretch the cramps from my hand.

Lena had slipped out an hour before to search for a suitable tree for the night, and I hadn’t seen Ponce de Leon since we arrived. Nicola had paid for a second room, saying she needed solitude. Nidhi was currently sleeping on one of the beds, leaving the other for me.

I turned off the desk lamp, stripped down to my jeans, and prepared for bed as quietly as I could. Despite my exhaustion, it took forever to fall asleep. The unfamiliar bed only made things worse. Throughout the night, I jerked up at the slightest sounds: a door opening or closing down the hallway, a car door slamming in the parking lot. Even the noise of Nidhi’s breathing seemed amplified.

I gave up around six in the morning and made my way, bleary-eyed, to the shower. Nidhi was still snoring when I finished. I picked up my T-shirt, sniffed, and grimaced. Everything smelled of smoke. Gutenberg had provided us with extra clothes that almost fit, but those had blown up with his apartment. I should have just jumped into the shower fully clothed.

Now where had Smudge gotten off to? I hadn’t remembered to put him back into his travel cage last night. “Please tell me you stayed in the room,” I whispered.

I kept the bathroom light on with the door cracked as I searched the room. Smudge could creep through surprisingly tight cracks and gaps. I didn’t think he could have squeezed beneath the door, but I wasn’t certain. Maybe he had gone on a midnight raid to see if anyone had left food in the hallway. Worse, he might have found the vending machine and crawled inside to stuff himself with sugar.

I checked the corners of the room, behind the desk and my bed, and the curtains before stopping to think. He would want somewhere warm and dry. He wasn’t by the heater. I bit my lip and checked Nidhi to make sure Smudge hadn’t curled up with her for warmth.

I finally found him behind the mini-fridge, pulled into a fuzzy ball and enjoying the heat of the compressor. I scooped him into his cage and set him on the windowsill, grabbed my shock-gun, and snuck out of the room.

The hotel offered a complimentary continental breakfast. My first thought upon seeing it was rather less than complimentary. A young man with unkempt hair to the middle of his back was setting out a bowl of questionable-looking apples beside a cafeteria-style cereal dispenser. I grabbed the best of the fruit and a bowl of technicolor sugar puffs and made my way to the table closest to the television on the wall.

A morning news host was interviewing Randall Nickles, a noted skeptic who had spent the past decade debunking the claims of psychics, ghost-hunters, alien abductees, and other stories of the supernatural. He wore a simple navy suit with no tie, and appeared utterly relaxed as he deflected one question after another. To listen to him talk, the various reports of magic were the result of overeager Internet rumormongering, human gullibility, and wishful thinking.

I imagined what would happen if word got out that Randy was a high-level field agent for the Porters.

“That doesn’t look like food.”

The soft, worried voice made me jump. “You got here faster than I expected.”

Bi Wei sat down on the opposite side of the table. “Your message implied that this was an urgent matter.”

Bi Wei had changed since I last saw her. Now, only a month after her rebirth, her English was flawless. She was dressed in a red-and-white floral dress with matching flip-flops. Black-framed designer sunglasses were pushed up on her brow.

“You could say that.” I scooped a spoonful of stale cereal into my mouth. “You look like you’re adjusting well to the twenty-first century.”

“Your world is amazing and terrifying, but the people are much the same.”

“That sounds like something Gutenberg would say.”

She tilted her head to one side. “What happened to him?”

I hesitated, but if I wanted her help, I needed to tell her the truth. She was strong enough to pull the details from my thoughts anyway. The fact that she hadn’t already done so was another point in her favor.

I told her about the attack, about Meridiana’s prison and the Ghost Army, and about Jeneta.

“The si gui ju¯n duì, Meridiana and her army, exist in the river of magic that runs through the Land of Midday Dreams.” She smiled at me and added, “I remember your distaste for the poetic, but our poetry helps us to see and understand that river, as if through a glass-bottomed boat. Meridiana has clouded the purity of those waters, but we felt the ripples of Gutenberg’s death.”

I could hear her fighting to control conflicting emotions. Gutenberg’s automatons had killed her peers. Her teachers. Her own brother. What would Nidhi say if she were here? Something gentle and nonjudgmental. “After five hundred years, I imagine that was hard to process. Overwhelming.”

“For all of us, yes. We wept. We raged that Gutenberg would never be called to account for his actions. And we grieved. Not
for the man, but for . . .” She brought her hands together. “For the waste, perhaps.”

She studied me more closely. “Your magic remains buried by Gutenberg’s spell. How did you contact us?”

I pulled the gold pen from my pocket.

She took it and turned it in the light. “This pen belonged to Johannes Gutenberg.”

“How can you tell?”

“His magic is distinctive.”

The hotel doors swung open, and Lena strode into the lobby, yawning. “Good morning, lover. Hello, Wei. Ooh, donuts!” She hurried to the counter, returning with a bowl of cereal and a glazed donut that looked far too plastic for my liking. “There’s a lovely maple in the park a block from here,” she said. “Eighty years old, give or take. Strong and sweet. Is Nidhi awake yet?”

“She was sleeping when I left,” I said.

“She’s not a morning person.” She tore the donut in half, took a bite, and turned toward Bi Wei, who was watching with a bemused expression. “How’s Guan Feng?”